Iran’s Nuclear Posture and the Scars of War

In waging war on Iraq, one of the points the Bush administration sought to prove was that President Bill Clinton’s policy of dual containment had failed -- that despite a decade of threats, sanctions, military action and UN-led disarmament, Iraq had continued to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Iraq, of course, was not the only target of dual containment. So was neighboring Iran, which likewise was suspected of having secret programs for building weapons of mass destruction and was seen as a destabilizing force hostile to US interests.

If dual containment failed, it is not because Iraq managed to escape from its strictures. Iraq, it turned out, had no WMD in March 2003, and probably did not have any for most of the preceding decade. Dual containment failed because mounting evidence suggests that Iran is the country that has made significant advances in developing non-conventional weapons, so much so that some experts see the country’s emergence as the Middle East’s second nuclear power (after Israel) as likely within two or three years.

It is even likely that Saddam Hussein was so acutely aware of the gathering danger across the border that for purposes of deterrence he kept up the pretense of hiding WMD, while declaring formally -- and truthfully -- that his arsenal had been dismantled by UN inspectors. The comprehensive report on Iraq’s WMD “program-related activities,” filed on September 30, 2004 by former inspector Charles Duelfer, certainly suggests as much. [1] Iran, too, has issued repeated denials that it is pursuing WMD, demonstrating its innocence by placing its signature beneath all the key multilateral restraints the world has designed to put a brake on the development of such weapons: the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and others.

Following revelations about its clandestine nuclear research in 2002, Iran pledged to allow UN inspections of the research facilities, then denied access to undeclared sites. In October 2003, Iran promised the trio of Britain, France and Germany that it would cease enriching uranium, only to resume enriching it less than a year later. Under another deal with the “European Three,” concluded in November 2004, Tehran again agreed to suspend uranium enrichment, while continuing to insist that any such activity would aim only at a peaceful nuclear program. The most recent deal has held so far, but Iran’s behavior has failed to allay international suspicions, particularly those of the United States.

Whether Iran’s nuclear program is strictly peaceful or intended for military purposes has not yet been established, but the program’s potential is beyond doubt. Why is Iran engaged in this apparently dogged pursuit of WMD concealed by an endless series of dodges, half-truths and quasi-concessions it fails to implement?

Insult to Injury

To understand the psychology of Iran’s behavior, we have to look back to the 1980s, when Iran and Iraq fought a bloody eight-year war, initiated by a reckless Saddam Hussein, perpetuated futilely by a vengeful Khomeini regime and ending in a stalemate with neither having scored territorial gain but both having suffered staggering losses of life. By conservative estimates, some 400,000 Iraqis and Iranians were killed in the war. [2] What finally compelled the Iranians to sue for peace was Iraq’s escalating resort to ever more lethal chemical weapons as a means of subduing relentless Iranian “human wave” assaults that threatened to overwhelm its heavily fortified positions. [3]

Chemical weapons are first and foremost weapons of terror, causing mass panic instead of inflicting huge casualties. Unequipped and untrained, Iran’s ragtag army of “volunteer” foot soldiers was easy prey for poison gases, which dispatched them in flight. In the final years of the war, Iraq’s chemical bombardment of Kurdish civilian areas, both in Iran and Iraq, and the threat to similarly target Tehran eroded the popular morale that had underpinned the war effort of both Iranian military forces and Iraqi Kurdish insurgents.

Iraq’s non-conventional capabilities exposed a near fatal vulnerability in Iran’s defenses. What was almost worse was that Tehran’s repeated remonstrations with the United Nations fell virtually on deaf ears. For six years, Iranian diplomats wrought ever more sophisticated legal arguments to persuade the UN that it should have an institutional interest in upholding the relevant precepts of international humanitarian law. In particular, the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibits “the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices,” was directly on point. The UN’s failure to uphold such precepts, the Iranians said, would undermine its credibility and impartiality, while giving rise to a regional arms race.

Not only were Iranian claims of Iraqi chemical weapons use largely ignored at the time, Iran was declared a liar and a hypocrite (not entirely without justification, as both sides committed atrocities during the war). Eventually -- adding insult to injury -- the chemical charges were turned on the Iranians themselves, even if no convincing evidence of Iranian chemical weapons use was ever produced. The United States, initially neutral in the conflict, increasingly tilted toward Iraq, preferring a drawn-out stalemate between the two belligerents (who thus no longer would pose a threat to either Israel or the West’s access to reasonably priced Gulf oil) or perhaps a victory by a weakened Iraq, but under no circumstances an Iranian one. Yet Iraq’s growing resort to poison gas on the battlefield as well as against civilians became somewhat of an embarrassment to the Reagan administration.

Disinformation Campaign

At first, when journalists stood on the verge of exposing Iraq’s wartime use of chemical weapons in the spring of 1984, Washington moved preemptively to condemn the Iraqis, slapping a ban on the export of chemical precursors to both Iraq and Iran. Internal documents show that US officials had been aware of Iraq’s conduct for at least six months. [4] Their condemnation came not a moment too late, because Iraq stood accused of the first recorded use of a nerve agent (tabun) on the battlefield. Then Donald Rumsfeld, President Ronald Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East, undercut this stern message when he traveled to Baghdad to explain that Washington’s position had been merely one of principle. Rumsfeld assured Iraq’s foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, that the Reagan administration’s support for the war against Iran and normalization of relations remained “undiminished.” [5] On November 26, 1984, the Iraqis were rewarded with the resumption of the diplomatic ties that had been severed since the June 1967 war. During Iran’s next “final” offensive, in the spring of 1985, Iraq proved undeterred, deploying more sophisticated chemical weapons delivery systems in countering the enemy.

By 1987, when the Iraqi regime started attacking Kurdish civilians (in both Iran and Iraq) with gas, Iraq’s sponsors in Washington were forced to engage in further damage control. Buoyed by the defeat of their bureaucratic opponents in the Iran-contra scandal, they had stepped up their support of a regime that most agreed was unsavory but saw as a necessary bulwark against the spread of Islamist radicalism in the sensitive Gulf region. They plied the Iraqis with satellite intelligence of Iranian troop movements and encouraged allied Arab states to provide them with military hardware. These measures led the Iraqis to believe that they enjoyed Washington’s benign tolerance of their war effort, whatever the means deployed. The result was more lethal chemical agents, used more massively than before, targeting now also civilian populations. The policy reached its apex with the wholesale gassing of the large Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja in March 1988, an attack in which several thousand civilians perished. [6]

When evidence of civilian chemical casualties first emerged in April 1987, the Reagan administration moved from preemptive condemnation to active disinformation in an effort to diffuse Iraq’s responsibility for waging chemical warfare. By blaming both sides equally, Iraq would effectively be let off the hook. By the fall of 1987, word was out that Iran had begun to respond to Iraqi chemical weapons outrages in kind. Baghdad repeatedly made such claims, and now Washington chimed in. [7] Iran thus had to fight off accusations of perpetrating precisely the kinds of atrocities from which it had always claimed it had refrained out of deference to moral principles rooted in humanity and religion (not to mention that it lagged years behind Iraq in developing these weapons). Whatever voice it had on chemical warfare -- the only rhetorical edge it had enjoyed over Iraq in the war -- was now drowned out by contrary claims that directly challenged the moral high ground it had professed to be taking. Iran’s own admonitions that it might eventually have no choice but to wage chemical warfare of its own certainly did not help.

Naked Deception

Initially, Iraqi claims that Iran was using chemical weapons had no empirical basis, and so they set about creating one. This was simple, since Iraq had a ready supply of chemical casualties of its own. These derived from two sources: gas dispersed incompetently by its own forces, and poorly manufactured, leaking munitions. There is substantial evidence that Iraqi airplanes routinely but unintentionally gassed their own ground forces. These self-inflicted casualties were often due to shifting winds, and they were especially likely to occur along the front lines where both sides’ troops were entrenched in close proximity. [8] The problem became more acute when Iran acquired American Hawk anti-aircraft missiles as part of the Iran-contra deals. Iran’s new missile capability forced Iraqi bombers to fly at much higher altitudes, which greatly enlarged the field of dispersal of the various gases dropped.

A post-war CIA report confirms the blowback problem. In attacking Iranian troops with chemical weapons, the CIA said, Iraq demonstrated “relatively little regard for the safety of Iraq”s own troops who were in or near the chemically contaminated area… Regardless of Iraq’s rationale, large numbers of Iraq’s own troops were killed or injured during Iraqi chemical attacks.” [9] Iraqi soldiers and pilots, interviewed in Iraq and elsewhere over the past four years, corroborate this conclusion. One pilot asserted that Iraqi planes accidentally bombed their own forces on many occasions with both conventional and chemical weapons. These mistakes, he said, caused many casualties. Moreover, he said, “Saddam Hussein was able to use the Iraqi victims as evidence of Iranian chemical weapons use.” [10]

Iraq’s chemical casualties were served up to visiting UN chemical experts in 1987 and 1988. Although the latter stated they were unable to establish that these were the victims of Iranian gas attacks, the public impression was left that indeed they were [11]; in private conversations in the UN corridors in New York, however, the experts made clear that in their minds these soldiers were victims of Iraq’s careless use of its own chemical munitions. [12]

When Iraqi planes gassed Halabja, the embarrassment potential was such that Washington went into disinformation overdrive. It took a week before the rhetorical counter-attack was ready for public display, but it was spectacularly successful. By suggesting deviously and on the basis of the flimsiest evidence that not only Iraq but also Iran had used gas in Halabja, State Department spokesmen lifted the onus off the Iraqis. [13] Declassified cables show that US diplomats were then instructed to propagate this myth and dodge the “What’s the evidence” question with the stock “Sorry, but that’s classified information” response. [14] They found a receptive audience. After all, why should anyone care? By taking American hostages, sponsoring the bombings and kidnappings carried out by Hizballah, and threatening the Middle East with an Islamic makeover on the Khomeini model, Iran had found itself in the international doghouse. Security Council Resolution 612 (May 3, 1988) condemning the Halabja atrocity came a long two months after the event and cast its disapproval on both governments in equal measure. [15] In the final analysis, the only evidence for the convenient claim that Iran used chemical weapons during the war is that the US government said so. Somehow, this sufficed.

The naked deception over Halabja, received with hosannas in Baghdad, gave the Iraqis the green light they needed to gas the war to an end. In a series of lightning counter-assaults against Iranian troops and Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas they used chemical weapons on the first day of each offensive to terrorize their adversaries, then pummeled the demoralized and retreating forces with tons of conventional munitions. They also threatened to place chemical payloads on the long-range missiles with which they had started bombarding Tehran, prompting a mass evacuation of civilians. Within three months, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini acquiesced to drinking from the “cup of poison,” acknowledging Iran’s inability to carry on and agreeing to a humiliating ceasefire.

“Drops of Ink on Paper”

Iran and Iraq emerged from the war badly scarred, but to the Iranians the profound feeling of having been virtually alone, and -- at least on the chemical weapons issue -- of having been right and yet scorned, left perhaps the deepest scar. The young and inexperienced Islamic Republic learned two important lessons from its experience: first, never again allow yourself to be in a position of such strategic vulnerability and second, when you are facing the world’s superpower, multilateral treaties and conventions are worthless. They decided to act on these insights.

It is generally accepted that toward the end of the war Iran had gained the capability to field its own chemical weapons. Parliamentary speaker (and future president) Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani declared two months after war’s end that “chemical bombs and biological weapons are poor man’s atomic bombs and can easily be produced. We should at least consider them for our defense… Although the use of such weapons is inhuman, the war taught us that international laws are only drops of ink on paper.” [16] In the 1990s Iraq was removed as a strategic threat, and Iran became an enthusiastic participant in international negotiations aimed at banning chemical weapons. In due course, after ratifying the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997, Iran complied with its obligation under the convention to report its possession of chemical weapons, and these were subsequently destroyed under international supervision. Nevertheless, there are persistent suspicions that Iran continues to have an active chemical weapons program. [17]

If the suspicions are correct, the program would be an indisputable legacy of Iraq’s repeated use of gas during the war and the failure of the international community to put an end to it. Moreover, the world’s ability to challenge Iran on any programs it may have today is reduced dramatically by the Iranian perception that it has nothing to protect it from WMD in the hands of a regional power, such as Israel, but its own WMD deterrent. The current standoff over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program is a graphic illustration of the problem.

Where to from here? How the nuclear question plays out will depend in part on how the internal debate unfolds inside Iran. One option that should be given serious consideration is the idea of a “grand bargain,” whereby Iran would give up its nuclear weapons program, cease its military support of Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups, and desist from running interference in Iraq in exchange for international support for its peaceful nuclear industry, guarantees of protection from regime change and other hostile military endeavors, and full reintegration into the community of nations. The Bush administration, whose accusations about Iran’s nuclear weapons program are undermined by its track record of WMD claims in the run-up to the war in Iraq, would be prudent to work toward this goal before the nuclear genie successfully springs its confines.

Endnotes

[1] Ali Hasan al-Majid, a senior member of the Baathist regime in a position to know, told Duelfer’s Iraq Survey Team that Saddam Hussein in the 1990s had “wanted to avoid appearing weak and did not reveal he was deceiving the world about the presence of WMD.” International Herald Tribune, October 8, 2004. The Duelfer report makes clear that Iran was “the preeminent motivator” of the regime’s policy to maintain a WMD deterrent. See Comprehensive Report of the Special Adviser to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD (September 30, 2004), available at http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/.[2] Although much has been written on the Iran-Iraq war, little of it is reliable. Few researchers have had unhindered access to Iran or Iraq, certainly not to key documents. (The fate, in the aftermath of the ouster of the regime in April 2003, of Iraqi state documents on the Iran-Iraq war is unclear.)[3] See Joost Hiltermann, “Outsiders as Enablers: Consequences and Lessons from International Silence on Iraq’s Use of Chemical Weapons During the Iran-Iraq War,” in Lawrence G. Potter and Gary G. Sick, Iran, Iraq and the Legacies of War (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004), pp. 151-166.[4] Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz notes in his 1993 autobiography that “something sinister seemed to be going on in Iraq. In late 1983, reports drifted in that Iraq, desperate to stop the oncoming Iranian forces, had employed chemical weapons on the front lines.” Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), p. 238. Shultz is being coy. In November 1983, one of Shultz’s aides sent him a memo in which he urges the government to “approach Iraq very soon in order to maintain the credibility of US policy on CW, as well as to reduce or halt what now appears to be Iraq’s almost daily use of CW.” Jonathan T. Howe, “Iraq [sic] Use of Chemical Weapons,” Information Memorandum, marked Secret/Sensitive, US Department of State, November 1, 1983 (document obtained by the National Security Archives under the Freedom of Information Act).[5] US State Department cable 1984STATE086663, March 24, 1984 (obtained under FOIA by the National Security Archives).[6] For a history of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against its Kurdish population, see Human Rights Watch, Iraq’s Crime of Genocide: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995).[7] In a speech at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel in October 1987, George Shultz publicly criticized “both Iran and Iraq for their alleged use of chemical weapons in the Persian Gulf War.” Reuters, October 19, 1987.[8] The Iraqis were generally much better prepared for chemical warfare than the Iranians. Iraq’s chemical targeters engaged in constant experimentation as they were supplied with newly developed chemical agents, munitions and delivery systems. Chemical self-defense was a standard component of Iraqi military training, against both mustard gas and nerve agents, including the highly lethal VX (whose use by Iraq in the war has been reported by Iraqi officers but not proven).[9] Central Intelligence Agency, “CW Use in Iran-Iraq War” (undated), available at http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/.[10] Author’s interview, Amman, August 28, 2000.[11] Concerning Iraqi casualties, the UN experts wrote that around Basra, “Iraqi forces have been affected by mustard gas and a pulmonary irritant, possibly phosgene. In the absence of conclusive evidence of the weapons used, it could not be determined how the injuries were caused.” UN Security Council, Report of the Mission Dispatched by the Secretary-General to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Conflict Between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq, S/18852 (May 26, 1987), paras 40-54 and 64B(a).[12] Author’s interview with Iqbal Riza, who accompanied several of the UN missions investigating chemical weapons use during the Iran-Iraq war, New York, July 12, 2000. Riza retired in December 2004 as Kofi Annan’s chief of staff.[13] State Department spokesman Charles Redman declared on March 23, 1988 that there were “indications that Iran may also have used chemical artillery shells in this fighting.” Quoted in Washington Post, March 24, 1988.[14] In April 1988, the State Department instructed its embassies to parry questions about the Iran allegation with the statement: “The US believes that both Iraq and Iran used chemical weapons in the fighting around Halabja.” The cable then continued: “(For use only if pressed for further information: While we have concluded there was Iranian use, we cannot discuss the information from which we have drawn our conclusion.)” (Cable, 1988STATE118615, April 15, 1988, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act) Although the United States, like other governments, would customarily and understandably decline to disclose intelligence information if in doing so it thought it might endanger its “sources and methods,” the reluctance in this case even to discuss the detail, however rough, of the alleged event -- to resort instead to a blanket assertion without any form of substantiation -- is striking.[15] The UN Security Council passed Resolution 612 on May 9, 1988, condemning “the continued use of chemical weapons” in the Iran-Iraq war, and urging “both sides to refrain” from future use.[16] Islamic Republic News Agency, October 19, 1988. [English][17] See, for example, W. Seth Carus, “Iran and Weapons of Mass Destruction,” published by the American Jewish Committee, December 18, 2000, available at http://www.ajc.org/pre/iranweapons.htm. Carus has said he suspects Iran has a program involving so-called Category IV chemical agents, which, while prohibited under the CWC, are not actually listed by name. Author’s interview, Washington, DC, July 20, 2000.